Genesis 11:4 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Whose top may reach unto heaven, i.e. a very high tower; a usual hyperbole, both in Scripture, as Deuteronomy 1:28, Deuteronomy 9:1, and in other authors. This tower and its vast height is noted by Herodotus, Diodorus, and others. Let us make us a name, i.e. a great name, as the phrase is elsewhere used. Compare also 2 Samuel 7:9, with 1 Chronicles 17:8. See also Isaiah 63:12,14 Da 9:15. They take no care for God's name, and the defence and propagation of the true religion, as duty bound them, but merely out of pride and vain-glory labour to erect an everlasting monument of their wit, and wealth, and magnificence to all posterity. Their design was not to secure themselves against a flood, which they well knew brick buildings were no fence against; nor would they then have built this tower in a plain, but upon some high mountain; but rather to prevent a total and irrecoverable dispersion. They sought therefore to bind themselves together in one glorious empire, and to make this glorious city the capital seat of it, and the place of refuge and resort upon any considerable occasion.